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Quick Passage of Bill Needed to Ensure D.C. Voting Representation

by Common Cause President Bob Edgar - 02/25/09 11:34 AM ET

The Senate is today debating the DC House Voting Rights Bill after a critical and historic vote yesterday to invoke cloture and begin consideration of the bill. The Senate voted 62-34 on Tuesday to end a filibuster, with seven Republicans voting YEA.

The Senate will likely be considering a slew of unrelated amendments designed to undermine the bill. The Senate needs to vote to table those amendments and act quickly to pass this bill to ensure that the citizens of the District of Columbia have voting representation in Congress.

The citizens of the District of Columbia, like all other Americans, deserve to be represented in Congress. DC residents pay federal income taxes, serve on juries, and die in wars to defend American democracy. DC citizens are currently serving in the armed forces in Iraq, fighting for new democratic rights for Iraqis that they do not enjoy themselves.

The DC House Voting Rights Act recognizes that partisan political considerations have always entered into issues that are fundamentally about fairness and justice. This proposal puts those considerations aside by adding two new seats to the House, one for the District and another that will go to Utah, which barely missed gaining another seat after the last census.
This legislation has majority support in the House and Senate and has the strong support of a large coalition of organizations from the voting rights and civil rights community. Prominent Republicans, including former HUD Secretary Jack Kemp, former Representative Tom Davis (R-VA), among others, also support the legislation.

When the bill was before the Senate in 2007, Secretary Kemp urged Senators to “Vote the American way. Get on the right side of history.”

Constitutional scholars including conservatives Kenneth Starr and Viet Dinh have written and testified in support of the constitutionality of this approach to providing DC citizens with voting representation in Congress.

Citizens of the District have been fighting for 200 years for the right to representation. At Common Cause we have been fighting for decades for home rule, voting rights and other measures to bring full democracy to the District. We look forward to celebrating this next big step in reaching that goal.